OurFuture.org Blogs: Undercover Blue

Foreign Disservice

Undercover Blue — Sun, 05 Oct 2008 22:27:06 -0400

Two items this weekend reminded me of the Foreign Service Exam. To be considered for the U.S. diplomatic corps, applicants have to pass a test which includes a challenging section on English usage. An English professor of mine once said he'd known college deans who couldn't pass it. Too bad passing it isn’t a requirement for American heads of state.

First, Barack Obama spoke briefly at the North Carolina Democratic Party's annual fundraiser dinner on Saturday night here in Asheville, NC. He said Americans are tired of a foreign policy "that's all about talking tough and acting dumb."

Next, Maureen Dowd's Sunday New York Times column lampooned Sarah Palin's "pompom patois and sing-songy jingoism."

Being mush-mouthed helped give the patrician Bushes the common touch. As Alistair Cooke observed, “Americans seem to be more comfortable with Republican presidents because they share the common frailty of muddled syntax and because, when they attempt eloquence, they do tend to spout a kind of Frontier Baroque.”

Darn right. And that, doggone it, brings us to a shout-out for the latest virtuoso of Frontier Baroque, bless her heart, the governor of the Last Frontier. Her reward’s in heaven.

[. . .]

We could, following her strenuously folksy debate performance, wonder when elite became a bad thing in America. Navy Seals are elite, and they get lots of training so they can swim underwater and invade a foreign country, but if you’re governing the country that dispatches the Seals, it’s not O.K. to be elite? Can likable still trump knowledgeable at such a vulnerable crossroads for the country?

Together, the quotes reminded me of that English section on the Foreign Service Exam – tougher than anything seen on the SAT or GRE. Because leading a great power takes great skill. The point of the test is, diplomacy requires careful, precise language, because simple misunderstandings or incautious words can lead to shooting wars.

But precision and care are unnatural for speakers of Frontier Baroque. Smoke ‘em out. Bring it on. Shoot first and ask questions later. Dead or alive. “Talking tough and acting dumb" is their foreign policy of choice because they have no other choice. They have no other skills. Skills are elitist.

Bless their hearts.

International relations based upon diplomacy, not just force, is unavailable for people with little respect for or command of the English language. Do Americans really want to place such people in command of the armed forces and international relations of a great power? A nuclear power?

Wall Street’s Lifeboat Ethics

Undercover Blue — Sun, 28 Sep 2008 21:03:16 -0400

Ruth: Will the lifeboats be seated according to class? I hope they aren't too crowded.

Rose: Oh mother, shut up! Don't you understand? The water is freezing and there aren't enough boats. Not enough by half. Half the people on this ship are going to die.

Cal Hockley: Not the better half.

Rose calls Hockley an “unimaginable bastard.” Our twenty-first century masters of the universe have done the Titanic bastards one better. As the U.S. economy lists, Wall Street brokers, bankers and speculators of the second Gilded Age expect those of us in steerage to buy them lifeboats – a $700 billion bailout. The same Washington voices that warned us of mustard gas and mushroom clouds insist we must bail out Wall Street to avert our own demise. The financiers will row back and pick us up once the ship goes down.

We have seen that movie.

An exchange last week between Larry Kudlow (CNBC, National Review; formerly of the Reagan administration, Freddie Mac and Bear Stearns) and Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders was a window into Wall Street’s bankrupt lifeboat ethics:

Sanders mocks Kudlow as a socialist for supporting the disaster capitalist bailout of Wall Street. Ordinarily, government expenditures designed to help Main Street educate children or provide health care for families are non-starters for Kudlow and his fellows. They cost too much. They present a moral hazard and tilt America towards socialism, something fiscal conservatives oppose on principle. Benefits for Main Street are irrelevant. National health care? "Oh, no!" Sanders mimics.

Yet Kudlow argues for government intervention in this case: "Every twenty or thirty or fifty years, I'm okay with it." Kudlow argues [1:59] that a taxpayer-funded bailout of Wall Street moguls will "first and foremost help Main Street, middle-class people." But why worry about them now? Why support government intervention after opposing it so adamantly on principle?

"Wall Street went bust!” protests Kudlow [3:58]. “I mean, look what happened. Bear Stearns went under. Lehman Brothers went under. Merrill had to sell."

See, his friends are in peril.

Do you face financial hardships? You’re on your own in the ownership society. But when Bear Stearns and Lehman dig themselves into a hole, it’s hair-on-fire time. Working families “desperately need credit,” that is, future Wall Street profits and bonuses are at risk. Government cannot intervene fast enough. The Bush administration did not blink (blinking telegraphs weakness) before demanding a $700 billion bailout package with no plan, no reforms and no strings. Their response time was record-setting. The better half might go under.

After New Orleans went under (water) and after hundreds drowned, conservative pundits and bloggers argued that taxpayers had no responsibility for bailing out lesser-half survivors who "irresponsibly" live and work in a town established below sea level in the eighteenth century. President Bush arrived late. He promised help. Three years later, New Orleans is still waiting.

Wall Street can wait a little longer. Investment houses don’t bleed. This is not a life-and-death matter for artificial lifeforms conceived in law, born on paper, and engineered to relentlessly pursue profit. The bottom line is, as actor Michael Biehn said of “The Terminator,” that’s what a corporation does. That’s all it does.

The bailout proposal being drafted in Washington may pass this week. The details are still being hammered out, and the draft was released as this was written.

Ironically, this crisis and the public outrage over the bailout has united Americans across the political spectrum in common cause: they don’t want it. What Beltway mavens do not yet grasp is that public outrage over the Wall Street bailout goes deeper than technical issues of oversight, reform, “golden parachutes,” who pays, the $700 billion, or if the damned plan will even work. We, the American people, watched in horror as Washington sat on its hands while New Orleans drowned. We don’t want the bailout, if for no other reason, because of the startling speed with which Washington insiders leapt to Wall Street’s rescue, tripping over each other to sacrifice the American taxpayer on the altar of corporate greed. It lays bare the degree to which leaders of both major parties are bought and paid for by the deep-pocketed suits who fund their campaigns and insist upon maintaining the status quo – their status quo – at all costs, including our democracy.

With comments like Kudlow’s and the inevitability of the bailout plan’s passage in Congress, that has never been more clear. Voters are mad as hell, and they’re not going to take this anymore.

We have seen that movie too.

Coarser Realities

Undercover Blue — Mon, 22 Sep 2008 00:09:12 -0400

After a string of elections characterized by “the politics of personal destruction,” what progressives have yet to come to terms with is that for conservative leaders elections are not about issues or ideas or what is best for the country. They are about establishing dominance, baser instincts. They are about which dog can pee highest on the tree. A businessman with RNC connections recently told a friend, Democrats keep losing because they just don’t get it. “They try to appeal to people’s best interests,” he said. “We appeal to the lowest common denominator.”

Hoping that away will not make it happen. Understanding and confronting it might.

Political leanings are shaped less by reason than we prefer to think. The Times of London reports that a recent study in the journal Science suggests that “nature, as well as nurture, could play a defining role.” A person's positions on hot-button political issues "can be predicted accurately from the way their bodies respond to frightening stimuli." The testing exposed subjects identified as strongly liberal or strongly conservative to disturbing images and sudden, loud noises.

The results … revealed significant differences in both responses, which corresponded with people’s political views. Those with “markedly lower physical sensitivity to sudden noises and threatening visual images” tended to support liberal positions, while those with strong responses tended to be more conservative.

This would fit with the hypothesis that people who have more fearful responses to perceived threats are more likely to be conservative, while those who have weaker responses develop more liberal views.

What you make of that is a matter of perspective. What conservative leaders made of that (without fancy studies) is a matter of history. Building a progressive future will require a broader understanding of the American political landscape while factoring in these coarser realities.

First, the understanding part. Jonathan Haidt, Associate Professor of Psychology at the University of Virginia, contrasts liberal and conservative views of morality in an article for Edge, entitled, “What Makes People Vote Republican?” He defines morality as a “system of interlocking values, practices, institutions, and psychological mechanisms that work together to suppress or regulate selfishness and make social life possible.” In Haidt’s view, liberal morality is built upon how people treat each other (harm/care and fairness/reciprocity), while conservatives emphasize ingroup/loyalty, authority/respect, and purity/sanctity. Research leads him to two conclusions:

First, when gut feelings are present, dispassionate reasoning is rare. ... This is the first rule of moral psychology: feelings come first and tilt the mental playing field on which reasons and arguments compete. If people want to reach a conclusion, they can usually find a way to do so. The Democrats have historically failed to grasp this rule, choosing uninspiring and aloof candidates who thought that policy arguments were forms of persuasion.

... the second rule of moral psychology is that morality is not just about how we treat each other (as most liberals think); it is also about binding groups together, supporting essential institutions, and living in a sanctified and noble way.

When Republicans say that Democrats "just don't get it," this is the "it" to which they refer.

Haidt’s experience of living in India was a lesson in coming to terms with a different moral order “on its own terms, not on mine.” His analysis of the American moral landscape includes prescriptions and this “graphic” analogy:

... people who call themselves strongly liberal endorse statements related to the harm/care and fairness/reciprocity foundations, and they largely reject statements related to ingroup/loyalty, authority/respect, and purity/sanctity. People who call themselves strongly conservative, in contrast, endorse statements related to all five foundations more or less equally. ... We think of the moral mind as being like an audio equalizer, with five slider switches for different parts of the moral spectrum. Democrats generally use a much smaller part of the spectrum than do Republicans. The resulting music may sound beautiful to other Democrats, but it sounds thin and incomplete to many of the swing voters that left the party in the 1980s, and whom the Democrats must recapture if they want to produce a lasting political realignment.

Now for the coarser realities. Living among voters in the south, I come to the same conclusions. The problem with Haidt’s analysis, the professorial responses to it, and too much analysis in the progressive blogosphere is just that – they are, as Barack Obama often is, too professorial, too removed from the street.

Buried at the end of a string of commentary on Haidt at the Edge, is an observation from Roger Schank, a retired professor. He reminds his peers that while they live in a world “where reasoned argument is prized. I live in Florida.” He provides examples of what he hears from people on the street:

Obama is a Muslim. His pastor hates America. In fact nearly everyone outside of America hates America. If you travel outside of America, go on a cruise, so you won't have to eat whatever it is one eats in those places. You don't want to talk to the people either, but that’s not a problem because none of them speak English. And, anyway they all hate us for our freedoms. Obama will put Al Sharpton in the cabinet. Dick Cheney was the greatest Vice President in history. The Jews are running the country anyway.

... They don't like wussies. The Democrats are always nominating wussies,—men who are not men. Obama looks like his wife runs the show at home. Kerry? Gore? Dukakis. Wussies. Not real men. Bad people are trying to kill us. We need to kill them first. Those guys wouldn't pull the trigger.

"I am not making this up. This is not a caricature. I wish I carried a tape recorder, " Schank says, and he’s right. Most of that is unfiltered FoxNews and conservative spam. Complex analyses are nice, according to Schank, but basically, “Most people can't think very well.” They weren’t taught to. It doesn’t help with standardized tests. Schank concludes, “Republicans do not try to change voter's beliefs. They go with them. Democrats appeal to reason. Big mistake.”

I will not go that far, but agree that when cruising through states like mine (NC), liberals and progressives on the whole still have not learned to show respect for local voters by learning their language. They would get more out of the visit, personally and politically, by listening through locals’ ears for what they care about rather than assuming to know. As Haidt suggests, “feelings come first.” If we want to win people’s votes, we first have to win their hearts and earn their respect by showing some.

Skeptic magazine publisher Michael Shermer observes in his response that attempting to diagnose (as Haidt alluded) what makes people vote Republican reveals a bias conservatives see clearly but liberals seem not to:

We could just as easily characterize Democrats and liberals as suffering from a host of equally malevolent mental states: a lack of moral compass that leads to an inability to make clear ethical choices, an inordinate lack of certainty about social issues, a pathological fear of clarity that leads to indecisiveness, a naïve belief that all people are equally talented, and a blind adherence in the teeth of contradictory evidence that culture and environment determine one's lot in society and therefore it is up to the government to remedy all social injustices.

Prejudice cuts both ways.

Cultural differences aside, Haidt found out that understanding his Indian hosts became easier once he realized he liked them. Will Rogers – known for never meeting a man he didn’t like – might observe that it is oxymoronic to ask people you don’t like to elect you as their representatives. They will know you don’t like them before you do. Empathy, on the other hand, has political as well as spiritual and evolutionary advantages. It is the kind of positive common denominator progressives should cultivate.

Let’s return to that that brag that Democrats lose because they try to appeal to people’s best interests, while Republicans win by condescending “to the lowest common denominator.”

Progressives who empathize with "values voters' " concerns might reply by pointing out, Why do you attend church, if not to feed your souls? And why would you support people who treat you as though you have none?

How They Treat Their Friends

Undercover Blue — Tue, 16 Sep 2008 22:59:47 -0400

Last night on The Daily Show, Barton Gellman, author of "Angler: The Cheney Vice Presidency" spoke (16:25) about interviewing Rep. Dick Armey (R-TX) for the book. Armey had opposed the Iraq invasion. Cheney took him aside before the Iraq War Resolution vote and told him that the threat from Saddam Hussein was even greater than the Bush administration's alarmist public rhetoric suggested.

He told Armey two things that the vice president never said in public. According to Angler, that “Saddam personally, and his family, had direct ties with al Qaida,” and “Iraq was making substantial progress towards a miniature nuclear weapon.” Both statements proved false. But at the time, they convinced Armey to relent and vote with the administration.

Armey is “a very angry man at this point.” Gellman said the Texas Republican told him, “I deserve better than to be bullshitted by the vice president.”

If this is how top leadership treats its closest allies to get votes, one wonders what would the McCain/Palin campaign team – essentially, Bush/Cheney’s campaign team – do to get yours?

It's the Phonies, Stupid

Undercover Blue — Sun, 14 Sep 2008 23:26:44 -0400

Would America seriously consider giving them another four years?

Millions of viewers who tuned in to watch the GOP convention in St. Paul found out, if they did not know already, that America is hip deep in phonies. Events recorded during and after the convention demonstrate that leading conservative opinion makers resemble tobacco industry lobbyists. Garrison Keillor recognized these aging boomers from high school, "as cohesive now as they were back then, dedicated to school spirit, intolerant of outsiders, able to jump up and down and holler for something they don't actually believe."

Comedy Central’s The Daily Show captured several supporting players in this clip, “Sarah Palin Gender Card.” It has attracted over three and a half million views, more than any other of the show’s bits to date. Jon Stewart’s TiVo team has preserved a digital exhibit of phonies who - without blinking - tell America what to think today, and tell America to think the opposite tomorrow.

Gov. Sarah Palin would be unblinkingly proud.

Karl Rove claims Palin’s experience as mayor of Wasilla, AK (pop. under 10,000) qualifies her to be vice-president. An earlier Karl Rove claims former Virginia Lt. Gov. and current Gov. Tim Keane’s limited experience as mayor of Richmond (pop. 200,000) would make him a purely political VP pick for Barack Obama, showing how unserious Obama is about America’s national security. Bill O’Reilly insists the Palin family’s pregnant teen is a family matter. An earlier Bill O’Reilly condemns Britney Spears’ parents as “incredible pinheads” because their teenage daughter is pregnant. Dick Morris and John McCain advisor Nancy Pfotenhauer take us through the Looking Glass: Hillary Clinton was a wuss for complaining about negative media coverage, but Sarah Palin is a victim.

An open MSNBC microphone caught Mike Murphy and Peggy Noonan speaking bluntly about the Palin pick during the Republican convention, calling it “cynical” and “gimmicky” (Murphy) and “political bullshit” (Noonan).

Joe Klein mentions Matt Miller's upcoming book, The Tyranny of Dead Ideas. Miller interviewed Douglas Holtz-Eakin, one of McCain's chief economic advisors. Holtz-Eakin admits that the next president will have to raise taxes. "It's arithmetic," he says. Asked why "tax-cutting mania persist among Republicans," Holtz-Eakin explains, "It's the brand, and you don't dilute the brand." Translation: McCain will raise your taxes after promising he won't.

In a radio interview last week, the Economic Policy Institute’s Heidi Shierholz cited recent economic reports and studies by the institute that highlight the sorry record of the "supply-side mythology" that McCain advocates (i.e., tax cuts boost revenues). Supply-side policies persisted through the Bush administration despite the fact that even those promoting them do not believe in them:

Glenn Hubbard ... was the first Chairman of George W. Bush’s Council of Economic Advisers, and an avid defender of the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts ... He devised a clever two-pronged strategy for loyally defending the tax cuts, while avoiding saying things that he as an economist did not believe to be true. [Emphasis mine.]

Unlike the prosperity promised by trickle-down economics, the Martin Blank-ish "moral flexibility" prevalent among neoconservatives has trickled down through the culture the same way the Bush administration’s “get tough” approach to terrorist suspects may have led to the Abu Ghraib abuses and the beating deaths of detainees at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan.

Responding last week to reports about Palin’s pregnant teenage daughter, conservative talk-show host Reese Hopkins (WRKO Boston) questioned Palin’s parenting on air:

Angry Republican listeners blew up his e-mail box, claiming Bristol's condition is family business. And Hopkins, who talked extensively on-air about the suspicious Gloucester teen pregnancy pact, was a little shocked. "You called these girls sluts, you said their parents were horrible," he said of his listeners. "But in 125 e-mails I have stacked in front of me, you're telling me [Bristol Palin's pregnancy] is not a big deal." Hopkins went back to the e-mails he received on the Gloucester story and compared them to his Palin e-mails. He found 70 listeners who flip-flopped on the teen pregnancy issue and invited them to explain.

For conservative talking heads who tell Americans what to think and when to think it, small government, fiscal and personal responsibility are mere shibboleths, gang colors displayed to rally their base. Even words like honor, on which John McCain based his reputation, have been shown to be conveniences to be discarded when political advantage is at stake. McCain's campaign team is the same Bush/Rove team that smeared McCain so viciously in South Carolina in 2000. Every four years, they drag the Roe v. Wade football out of the closet and tee it up for the religious right to have another run at. After the election, they yank away the football and put their wedge issue back in the closet for another four years, leaving supporters wondering what happened this time? McCain has freshened up the act for 2008, with a real, live Lucy to hold the football.

If that wedge issue ever stops working, conservative operatives might urge values voters to help a friend recover a large sum of money tied up in Nigeria. As with so many victims of that particular scam, voters will continue to give the phonies money and support rather than admit that they have been had and had again.

Honor and integrity be damned, many voters are prepared to forgive smears, lies and blatant flip-flops if they think they will help elect politicians with whom they identify. (At our regional state fair this weekend, a farmer and former Republican - now registered independent - defended Palin's non-answers in her ABC interview: "Well, she answered them ... the way she wanted to. She’s a politician. They all do that. It’s called spin.")

It sometimes takes looking into a mirror to truly see ourselves. Digital technology has made it tougher to get away cleanly with shameless phoniness. Robert Greenwald excepted, it is still an underutilized tool for progressives. If presented with repeated examples - video examples - of phoniness by conservative talking heads, will voters defined by their beliefs finally reject people who clearly have none? Or will they avoid responsibility for supporting them by saying, "They all do it"?

Progressives will never know unless they try. As the “Sarah Palin Gender Card" video and the open-mic comments make clear, conservative opinion-makers do not even believe what they say. After years of successfully peddling propaganda and lies, the phonies think American voters are still gullible enough to believe them anyway. But with relentless video voter education by progressives, maybe not so much.

As If the Last Eight Years Never Happened

Undercover Blue — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 02:52:57 -0400

Scratch out Barack Obama's name and insert Al Gore or John Kerry's, and this week’s GOP convention was the same gleeful character assassination fest we have come to know and loathe. Except during Gov. Sarah Palin’s speech when it took on the air of a political movie written and directed by Joel & Ethan Coen.

Come to think of it, a lot of the convention had that feel.

Republicans campaigned this week against Washington. They campaigned as reformers. They promised change, smaller government, fiscal responsibility, an energy policy, and tax cuts to create jobs. It was as if the last eight years of Republican rule never happened. As if they never ran Washington, tried these things and failed miserably. As if the Iraq occupation and its spiraling costs, cooked Iraq intelligence, Abu Ghraib, rendition, torture and Guantanamo never happened. As if the loss of America’s international standing never happened. As if warrantless wiretaps, voiding habeas corpus, record deficits, soaring debt and expanded government never happened. As if presidential power grabs, a politicized Justice Dept., vote suppression, Rep. Tom DeLay and the K-Street Project, or Jack Abramoff’s conviction never happened. As if declining incomes, outsourced jobs, the sub-prime mortgage crisis never happened. As if energy uncertainty, economic uncertainty, health care uncertainty, and that heckuva job responding to Hurricane Katrina had nothing to do with conservative rule.

Seven years after 9/11, and they still can’t connect the dots.

The problem for progressives now is effectively reminding people of all that in a sound bite. Here’s one I have been working on that doesn’t name-call or blame. It is a “just the facts, ma’am” walk down memory lane. It is interactive, inviting listeners to fill in the blanks themselves.

They told you there’d be candy and flowers.
They told you they’d rebuild New Orleans.
They told you we don’t torture people.
They told you tax cuts would create jobs.
They told you they’d bring honor and dignity.

What else have they told you lately?

Create your own.

The Hot Mike of Truth - Two Cons Turn Thumbs Down on Palin

Undercover Blue — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 19:59:15 -0400

"It's over." - Peggy Noonan

Caught in a hot-mike moment, conservative pundits/advisors Peggy Noonan and Mike Murphy reveal their feelings about McCain's VP pick to Chuck Todd:

Murphy (or maybe Todd): They’re all bummed out. I mean, is she really the most qualified woman they could have turned to?

Noonan: The most qualified? No. I think they went for this, excuse me, political bullshit about narratives and (inaudible) the picture.

Progressives might want to keep the eye on the McCain ball over the Palin pick. Too much focus on Palin's negatives (or lack of positives) plays badly. The problem for McCain is McCain and his under-vetted selection of Palin. That's where the focus needs to remain. This was a panic pick.

In addition to what the conservative punditocracy thinks, the Palin pick might not work with women as McCain might have hoped. Polls released since the Palin announcement suggest the strategy (if that's what they call it) may backfire. Gallop:

These data show, however, that at least initially, McCain has lost ground among both white independent women and white independent men (and among Democrats of both genders) since the convention and his vice-presidential selection.

Editor & Publisher reports:

From Rasmussen: Some 38% of men said they were more likely to vote for McCain now, but only 32% of women. By a narrow 41% to 35% margin, men said she was not ready to be president - but women soundly rejected her, 48% to 25%.

Anecdotally, a conversation with a Catholic mother of seven mother yesterday confirms what the polls report. Over the weekend, she and friends discussed the Palin pick. With Palin having young children (one, an infant with Downs) and a pregnant daughter, she said, McCain had no business offering - and Palin had no business accepting - the Republican VP slot.

[h/t Crooks & Liars]

All the King's Hatchet Men

Undercover Blue — Mon, 01 Sep 2008 23:00:30 -0400

Let's see:

Karl Rove
Steve Schmidt
and now Tucker Eskew has joined McCain.

All McCain needs to complete his dream smear team is to resurrect Lee Atwater, the GOP's "happy hatchet man." (Obviously, McCain would, if he could.) Except it was Atwater who, as he lay dying of a brain tumor, discovered what America needed most was what was missing in him, "a little heart, a lot of brotherhood" to cure "the spiritual vacuum at the heart of American society, the tumor of the soul." Bill Moyers had this video remembrance.

Carpe Dial

Undercover Blue — Mon, 01 Sep 2008 00:53:23 -0400

Barack Obama’s seven year-old daughter, Sasha, said “Hi, Daddy” to his big-screen image after mother Michelle Obama’s speech to the Democratic convention in Denver. It was a humanizing moment, those two words perhaps doing more than her mother’s speech to make Obama accessible to voters. MSNBC’s Norah O'Donnell mentioned it the next day, saying, “You have to win people’s hearts before you can win their minds.”

We founded our tiny 527 committee, Blue Century, to do just that. We run local radio ads directed at winning the hearts of independents and swing voters, to plant progressive ideas where they are otherwise mocked. The conservative movement got where it is by using the media to carry its water. It’s time progressives pushed back – beyond the web – using the same tools. The Strangebedfellows coalition is already doing it, as is MoveOn, Think Progress and OurFuture.org.

Why doesn’t the Democratic Party do it? Because it is not in the mission statement. Politicians sell themselves. Parties sell their slates. That is their job. This change will have to originate outside the Beltway. Working to undo decades of conservative messaging that has poisoned the political well is our job. That, and moving beyond selecting candidates by their salable personalities and ability to raise large sums of campaign cash. A movement has to be broader and deeper than its leaders to be enduring.

Digby wondered in these pages just how we can push forward a progressive agenda:

So, the question for the movement seems to me to be less whether progressives recognize this moment, or agree on the agenda, which I think we do. We have also become pragmatic in our expectations of a new administration and take seriously FDR's admonition that a sympathetic president must nevertheless be "made to" do it. The next question then, in discussing this progressive political moment, is how.

By what processes can a progressive movement "make them do it?" I don't have the answers for that, but I think we'd better start focusing on it.

The American Left has been steamrolled for decades by the well-funded conservative juggernaut. Here is just one way for the little guys to push back. Progressives can mount a fifty-state, grassroots media offensive to promote our view of America with very little money, infrastructure or coordination. Offense is not about playing defense harder. Playing offense means promoting our own ideas instead of devoting all our time to refuting disinformation from political opponents. Let them play defense for a change.

This year, we few will spend under $10,000 running homemade “get out the vote” ads promoting progressive themes on local radio from January through the election. They run not only on progressive radio, but on the Rush Limbaugh channel during drive time on a local talk show heard in much of our congressional district – one out of the 435 nationwide.

Can we afford to blanket the airwaves? No. Funds are limited. The spots run only a few times a day on select channels. And sure, a small group of middle-class activists can’t pull this off in New York, Chicago or Boston. But those markets aren’t where progressives are weakest. They are weakest in red-state America, where many media markets are small and advertising is more affordable. So rather than abandon the field to conservative media giants, progressives should use their limited resources as creatively as possible to target red-state voters. (I originally described that approach here.)

Advertising is the corporate media’s biggest weakness. Show up with money in hand and they will talk to you. In small markets like ours, stations have been willing to work with us. Because winning hearts and changing minds is not tied to the election cycle, there is no time limit. We do the best we can with whatever cash we can muster. Welcome to grassroots activism.

The time is ripe. When Barack Obama said in his acceptance speech, “I stand before you tonight because all across America something is stirring,” he was right. He has tapped into it. Here are a few spots we have been running for months. You will recognize common-ground themes Obama used in our spots, some written over a year ago:

LEFT BEHIND

[Left Behind audio, 30 sec.]

VO: Think No Child Left Behind is a goal everyone can embrace? Then why not No Worker Left Behind? No Family Left Behind? No American Left Behind?

VO: We train our soldiers – never leave a team member behind. It’s a code of honor. Why is that good enough for our troops, but not the rest of us? Been struggling as an Army of One? Don’t stand alone.

VO: Register. Vote. Volunteer. Learn more at BlueCentury.org.

BROKEN WINDOWS

[Broken Windows audio, 30 sec.]

VO: You wouldn’t let the lawn go to seed or leave broken windows broken. You worked hard for your home. And the longer you let things go, the more it takes to set them right. With collapsing bridges, overtaxed power girds and decaying infrastructure, isn’t it time we felt the same way about the home … we call our country?

VO: Take ownership in America. Register. Vote. Volunteer. A message from BlueCentury.org.

SIX MILLION

[Six Million audio, 30 sec.]

SFX: Six Million Dollar Man-style lead in

VO1: New York: a city shaken, New Orleans: a city drowned, the
heartland: in disrepair. Yet, dependent on foreign oil and foreign banks, America remains resilient.

SFX: Electronic sounds

VO2: We can rebuild her. We have the technology. We can make her
better than she was – better, stronger, more competitive. But she needs heroes – like the one inside you.

VO: Register. Vote. Volunteer. Learn more at BlueCentury.org.

To build a movement, we have to meet people where they are and lead them to where we are. Instead of attacking conservative memes voters already accept, these spots embrace them, then broaden them – a kind of political aikido taking them in a progressive direction. The messages advocate no programs or policies, just progressive themes. It is a kind of transpartisan approach. Hearts first. Heads later.

Progressives have to expand beyond Lakoff’s reframing of issues into rebranding. People vote their identities and we need them to identify with us again, so we look for common-ground themes. Bare knuckle tactics work in elections – and there has not been enough of that from Democrats in 2008. But rather than just hurting political opponents to prove our toughness, progressives should focus more on winning over the crowd. That’s where the votes are. We need strategies for winning hearts and changing minds over the long term. Get Americans to think like progressives again and they will start voting like progressives again. Instead of just promoting politicians we hope will pull from the front, we should push more from behind and expand the constituency for change. That’s one way to “make them do it.”

Mounting grassroots radio campaigns in smaller markets in all fifty states can help accomplish this, and do what Howard Dean's Internet campaign did: make politics more accessible to ordinary people. Today anyone can produce radio spots without expensive recording facilities, and run them without being millionaires. AM – where most talk radio is – is inexpensive, especially in smaller markets. Some of the spots we run cost as little as $7 for 30 seconds. If they sound a bit homemade, fine. They are.

Almost anyone can do it. Almost anywhere. That's the point.

What we see among older political hands is a reluctance to try anything new like this, a “Shut up kid; when we want you opinion, we’ll ask for it” attitude. When you fear change, you get more of the same. That just won't cut it. There is always an election at stake, always a reason not to rock the boat, always a reason for not trying anything new. Radio is not the only way to promote a progressive future. It is just what we are trying, asking no permission, accepting help where we can get it.

Locally funded, locally produced progressive messages can help erode conservative media dominance, activate our base, win over independents and swing voters, and inspire both veteran and new volunteers. They will be heard long after listeners have tuned out attack ads. By keeping the effort modest, grassroots ads can run year round promoting our message, winning hearts, changing minds and mobilizing new voters.

Win their hearts, and their heads – and votes – will follow.

Cell Division

Undercover Blue — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 00:08:30 -0400

We were winding down after a weekend of staffing the campaign booth at our local Goombay! festival when an old friend interrupted his bike ride to chat on the front walk. Barry opined that the presidential election would be a victory (for Obama) of monumental proportions. What puzzles him is how the polling shows the race so close when the atmospherics make it feel like a landslide in the making. We wondered whether the growth in use of cell phones is skewing the polling.

Back inside at the computer, Google turned up this from Pew (June 2007):

While the cell-only problem is currently not biasing polls based on the entire population, it may very well be damaging estimates for certain subgroups in which the use of only a cell phone is more common. This concern is particularly relevant for young adults. According to the most recent government estimate, more than 25% of those under age 30 use only a cell phone.

Pew updated their cell phone post last month:

The more serious challenge to survey research posed by cell phones is the declining absolute numbers of certain types of respondents, most notably the young. In recent Pew Research Center surveys, only about 10% of respondents in landline samples are under age 30, which is roughly half of what it should be according to the U.S. Census. Young voters reached on landlines share many of the characteristics of the cell-only group, especially in terms of political views. That is why statistical weighting of the landline samples helps to correct for the absence of the cell-only. But the shortfall of young respondents in absolute numbers means that pollsters are limited in their ability to analyze differences within this age group.

It appears that Pew is having trouble counting those kids with their cell phones, maybe more than 25% of those under age 30. They are trying to extrapolate from what they do know by weighting their results. In school, we called that by the more colloquial “fudge factor.”

Perhaps this is why Barry’s instincts for the election outcome is at odds with the fudged counting of under-30 voters: he used to run a local FM rock station. Used to, because the family-owned station lost its license in an auction (three years after going on air with a construction permit) after Sen. John McCain introduced a rider to the Balanced Budget Act of 1997 that required new licenses to be auctioned off. The family had been in radio since 1947, but lost its small business to media deregulation and consolidation because, in the end, they weren't wealthy enough to hire a lobbyist.